It's the end of July 2004 and the end of my space here. Begun in 1997, this site is now full: I can add no more. I don't even know that they will accept this text page. As for where we are , where we stand now, this website begun about a mom in Hermosa Beach and then Van Nuys, California who was getting a heart transplant at UCLA and wanting to show her friends the latest news, and which has several other "made in the nineties" "website-by-this-author " links, such as a tribute to my school and one to my grandparents, one to my summer camp and favorite movie and a forum for feelings about one lady in prison, all appreciated out there by respective afficiandos,as the guest books for those sites attest(I have 5 guestbooks reachable from my main page--all full of great words for me!): has degenerated into a "blog" about an immoral economy in the United States the Bush people are carving for us. Excuse me, they don't carve. That turkey that Bush , Geo., posed with in Baghdad on Thanksgiving was half-cooked and colored to look juicy and none of the soldiers there got roast turkey and dressing as the photo op suggested ( from Granta, a famed literary magazine , summer 2004). They fake. (Another fake was a photo of Bush in front of a bunch of boxes at the Winsconsin Make-A-Bear place with words similar to "Job Growth in America" over his head in a banner. Each box around Bush (dozens) said "Made in China" on two sides real big and a black sticker had to be placed over the words. The actual boxes that said "Made in America" were a photo in the banner with the photo-op words...looking as if Bush was standing amongst them, too. )And we wonder why we mistreat Homeland Security prisoners and Kentucky Fried Chicken chickens? We're all on something that's in our frigging food or air! Daily nearly a millionaire Bush person talks to me for an hour but "can't send me any money by laws too complicated to go into" which I try to understand. Obviously he must feel he is being watched ; my girlfriend has already slipped $20 into pieces of paper inside envelopes with fake return addresses and sent them to me 3 times to proove anyone can slip anyone $20. He must have a heck of a control-freek wife.But I don't see why he can't tell her the truth and she'd agree. Now, the reason I even think of him sending me money is only because he offered it--in sinful amounts, which keeps being delayed. Several times I have told this English author I can't name , gently, that I don't really care about a master bath with two sinks (the only way they build them now ), an entertainment house (the only way they build them now)--that all we need is $7,000 or $3,000 (it has varied over the 3 years I've been in touch with him, as I solve some of my own problems). He always says nonesense you're going to be chauferred, on real medical with quality doctors , have a maid ,your kids can go to Yale, you are going to be wealthy. And my factory -in-Ohio -working girlfriend from grade school is who sends me $20 the days that we eat and have gas and toilet paper. My teen said,after he talked to her an hour , then praised her intelligence after not letting her get a word in :" Four words: The Wizard of Oz". The first time I spoke with this author of gangster-studded popular fiction I told him my story and that I was happy every day to have another day to read and learn and love and laugh . He then earnestly spent several years trying to make me feel like my life was lacking, as if of jealousy:oh, it would make a good novel, it comes off so planned, although it wasn't, probably: In year one he sent us house-hunting, alluding the money was a week away and a $300,000 house was alright and actually a little less than he expected to pay for a decent " step up " for us.And he would of course pay for appropriate furnishings . So we spent all summer of 2002 at open houses every weekend, 7 a day or more, and showings through the week, of homes in that range. It really drove home what we didn't have---we'd never been inside homes in that range.Not to mention ruined the kids' entire summer ,for, it turned out, no reason at all---we couldv'e waited 3 more years, at least.. Now, 2 years after that, he said yesterday that I need to just be glad each day that I'm alive and thank God for THAT. Like I said, that's what I told him I was doing in my first letter.He then had me spending every day of the next 3 years thinking a legal team was coming to my door that day and I was to be rich. Like I wouldn't therefore not bother paying $4 for gas (money is very very tight ) to get downtown to file for homestead, knowing I'm moving in a few weeks so it would be nullified anyway.Like I'd still go through a degrading 5-hour long Medicaid application interview knowing that before a doctor ever had room for an appointment for my kids they were going to be rich and not eligible to see him/her.I mean, this guy says tomorrow, not 6 months. My sister says cuz if he said 6 months he wouldn't have a good excuse to call me daily. He's married. Anyway with all the anxiety any normal person would have knowing their life is being uprooted today, daily, for 3 years, and going through the let-down phone call daily, for 3 years ("There's been a delay..") , he then had the nerve to tell my teen on the phone yesterday that he knew she had a bad life, her house seemed full of anxiety to him and mainly brcause I was highly anxious all the time,wasn't I ? And that she needed to have other adult mentors in her life (him, I suppose). I don't know if he'll ever really send me one penny in my lifetime, if he's waiting for me to die so he can prey on my teen becasue she thinks I believe in him, if he even knows her father sat next to her the whole hour he spoke to her and that he was on a speaker phone and that otherwise she wouldn't have spoken to him, til now always refusing to answer his calls if home alone or closest to the phone.That her father is always here, that she's never been away from us.(Unhealthy as it sounds, it can't be helped. As a family in crisis, we just naturally hold hands tight .) He speaks of having us removed from our substandard housing and last weekend said his people weren't leaving here, once they showed up, without me, he guarenteed. (This was said with a laugh when I said it perhaps would be best if his people left me boxes to pack all night and returned early the next day.)However I have told him at least 5 times that I poured over 20 k into here 6 years ago and have all new floors, walls,ceilings,windows, wiring, sinks, tub, toilet, counters, cabinets,highest quality ceiling fan-lights in each room , all new electrical outlets and switches, carpet, inported tile, pergo, oak flooring, new, stained, wood doors on all rooms, new back door, new pocket slider on new screened-in porch with new pan roof, cypress shake wall, washer and dryer outlets, tile on the porch, custom wood blinds on all the windowa but one, and all are over-sized windows to make up for the darkness of being under perhaps the two largest live oaks in the state , and for sure the county.The carpet was a fortune. Our problem is we've needed an electrician ever since the work was done on the house and had no money for one all along, and we need the dead branches of one of the live oaks trimmed as they pierce our tin roof every day and cause leaks.As I said, $7,000 would do it all. The city offered to remove the tree,fix the roof and ceiling, insulate the attic and bring the wiring to the new, 6-year-old box and even give me a new front porch and door and rescreen my windows and side porch if my $1,200 property tax was paid off . The electric isn't unsafe, just my whole disability check monthly. But this man can't send me $1,200 in time (I lose my $80,000 house in less than 6 months for the unpaid tax). Instead, he's got this wild plan that we have to vacate all our private possessions to "his people" who are driving us to a safe place immed. because , he told my kid,"your mother says your house and neighborhood are subpar. Is this true?" What would he feel if I talked to his kid that way? "Is your dad truthful?" of course she said yes although he lied to her --I never said my house was subpar, other than because of the leaks he knows I fixed with my whole July check---he told me to, : "You've got the guy there," he said;"You might as well do the whole job now rather than go through the bother of gettting someone back for the other half ":, although I told him it would break me. He was so sure his dinero was coming to me a day or two later, so it was ok. Usually he says to act like I'm not about to get money, since I threw away the sliding-glass door's vertical blinds 3 years ago the eve before his lawyers were to come cuz I had no money to wash them, and ever since, all the hookers, pimps, johns, crack-lords and homeless on Nebraska in hooker town can see all of us in our dining room -living room at night, my teen on the computer til 3 a.m. while i'm sound asleep.So now he says he always said to act like normal--but he didn't and anyone with imagination or who's been there knows how hard it is to spend hours in a food stamp line if they know if they just wait one more day they can eat at a restaraunt. My sister says 100 calls in 52 days from him constitutes harassment not just calls,and says no wonder I am such a wreck, going through all this. He told my daughter I had specific "orders" to tell no one and chose to tell "60 people". I have the email printed where he says tell no one "(of course your family and close friends are ok to confide in, I am not asking you to keep secrets from THEM"). He understood, then, 3 years ago, that I 'd go nuts keeping this all inside and trying to hide the nature of his 60-minute-a -day phone calls first from the man I lived with and then my ex who won't leave our home or living room couch, plus my kids who are with me 24-7 and who have to suffer me muting the tv throughout their whole show while the millionaire talks to me. But now he's all cock -sure I told 60 people and he knows why no one helps me, he told Mary--I don't follow orders and am too anxious , a nervous wreck. Well, she knows I stopped meeting people the day I was given a year to live so I could spend that year with my children,and getting affairs in order, which at the time meant also winning a settlement for them as I would soon be dead,and they had no car. (It is now long gone, but their dad and them have a van still, and us a home) and since then because I have no transpo to go anywhere where people are,even friends' homes, so lost touch with them over the past 4 years, 3 of them putting off calling or writing them "just one more day" til Mr. Rich's money came in so I could put on a better face than the one I now present--no water or electric, no food or snacks for the friends. That's why the connections--networking', he called it to Mary--diminished. Waiting on him. I don't know what is going on but that is now yesterday and we are picking up from the pieces we were left in . My cousin says I can come live in the woods with her. God seems to have a handful of intellectual, once=homeless. homeless advocates, and may be asking me to churn my talents there too. This may be what it is about. It is a well-hidden secret that there are 60% more homeless since the war began, most women and children. Affordable housing is constantly razed for higher-cost housing. New subdivisions everywhere make you have to live in one or that style of new, 3,000 square foot housing or you are subpar, unable to entertain, the big thing we all have to do now. People see the ads , tv, paper, and think everyone is living a life of Riley but them. I thought I was the only one who missed summer(no drive to anywhere as a family, no bike ride, no day at the beach, no leaving the house, the electric to be off all August for the second year in a row, IN FLORIDA....) til I joined a Yahoo Homeless in America site and found a link to websites where the needy beg for help. There isn't just Modestneeds.com and that other one===there are millions of blogs asking for financial support, and websites where people can beg for free. What you get after a few hours' reading is an overall view of a country filled with people newly losing it--their home,their job-- a people so soft they feel they can ask on the web and the wealthy countrymen will respond, as if anyone with money ever goes to those depressing sites, doesn't have suspicions that each letter is a scam,since many of the rich scammed any way they could to get there and think we all do it( that's why they won't go to hell), and as if most of the country wwasn't at the site begging along with them. They are far removed from say England of the 1600's when lots of people were sold as chattel or used as slaves, from newborn orphans who were regularly raped at 15 by their slave masters, to those down on their fortunes who came from money but a relative lost it.It was so common to be poor and uncommon to have a fancy spread that no one felt sorry for the poor. Americans think they are special and will get empathy and aid. It was'nt supposed to be this way--we guarenteed everyone ther right to pursue happiness. It was ok to want and get a big boat, jet skis, tropical landscaping, a master garden tub fit for a king---- Anyway , here is the local homeless news: the leaders of nearby St Peterburg want to hide it , fear it , want it to just go away without anyone reaching the throngs to tell them of it and how we need to change how we do things to stop a crisis when everyone my age lands on social security and finds that extra pension they counted on already spent by a lieing CIO, and that there is no housing affordable on Social Security. (I am on SSI) There are 19 major cities with no housing as low as my check, most others, a house or efficiency non-bedroom apt of any kind equals my whole $560 check and I have 2 kids who need bedrooms and we all need food , clothes, electric, a telephone---so we are living like the homeless: tempest-tossed in the land that used to say send me your tempest-tossed and wretched refuse from your teeming shore. Like the homeless, there is no little girl's bedroom with her posters on the wall and dresser top arranged her way and place to have sleepovers and a bed for a little girl with children's bedsheets and a pink fluffy comforter and her favorite stuffed animals on it---just like the homeless little girls, she is unable to express herself, sleeping under a seperate blanket from mama in Mama's bed in mama's over-stuffed, very cluttered -with-mama-stuff room. It's just I was amazed how many people are hurting this month, losing their house next---it's not in the news. I've got to help them. I've got to get the word out. But this country is so big, so divided, that although dozens of good books have been written about what Bush is doing, how he is wrong, and at least 2 documentaries made, they still half of them want to vote for him again, don't yet hear what we are saying--that he is the master of deceit , social security gutting becomes social security reform, raping our forests becomes the forest preservation department, just like Animal Farm, that disturbing book where nothing meant anything, and like that great new book, Heart Seizure about how an old lady needing a heart transplant and next on the list gets her new heart swiped for the president of the U.S. so her sons suddenly find themselves stealing it back and on the run, with limited time with it on ice. Here the government says all sorts of folderal. Same in A.A. Milne's ancient"Once On a Time: an adult fairy tale", which I read and loved at 13. Read all 3 and then read Bush and co's speeches again, see what they named the new federal departments they made, and weep.Yet half our nation wants to be sheep. Why? I suggest as Bush told the elite "you are my base." I think there's some hanky-panky going on with the polls to make Bush look respected, and that everyone making $200,000 a year like my author friend love him. maybe they rerpesent most of those polled. After all, the phoneless, those working two jobs, homeless, nursing home residents, and many other registered voters can't be polled. To give you an instance of the stupidity of Bush's healthcare for the poor, my primary dropped all his Medicaid patients June 30 because Medicaid hadn't paid him for any one he billed for in a year and only paid half what others did anyway. I came down with weepy round sores on my right eyelid, forehead, and scalp in June. He saw me for it June 27 and gave me referrals to see an eye specialist as it went into my eye and burned and labs to see if it was shingles. But he said if he didn't get the results back by June 30 he couldn't help me. No eye doc could fit me in that fast and the lab said a week if I wanted an apt, or come in if I wanted to wait up to 6 hours. I had no gas to get there, though. Medicaid will send a bus pass but onlyif I have 2 medical appointments in a given month which they call and verify and then it takes a week to arrive. I had 3 days to get there and get the results sent to my doctor. It was impossible. Meanwhile I applied for a new primary and called Medicaid as directed and told them his name to a living person who laughed when I asked if they needed his address and said they had all that. He never 'filed' my choice and I found out July 1 I had no primary care physician til August 1 when the one I picked would be effective since I "didn't notify them in time" (which, I did, too.) I have an appt. with him Aug 2. meanwhile my referrals are useless plus until my new primary re-refers me to my heart transplant doctor, pacemaker-defibrillator doctor, and pain management doctor Medicaid will refuse to pay any visits I make to them whether I had the appointment for 4 months or whatnot and refuse all the drug prescriptions I've had for 7 years from them cuz I don't have a referal to that cardiologist anymore.. And the pain dude has me on 3 addictive drugs I am going to go cold-turkey on all at once. This is our ace, quality medical care of our uninsured and poor. For shame! Meanwhle my brother-in-law Mike , who I told you about who lost the big bone(one of two we humans have ) in his calf to infection due to lack of insurance so he lived with it infected a year as he couldn't get help for it --just got denied SSI for the second time. Come on ! If anyone deserves it, he does! He's never worked any job but hard labor and now he takes 4 minutes to walk down 2 steps! He can't climb a ladder or keep his balance on a roof. Are they crazy? Of course, and wrong, and somehow it would get straightened out, one hopes, but he's so freeked that he's going to lose his bedroom in his zombie disabled medn's shelter and have to live in the woods behind a supermarket that today is his birthday and all he wants to do is kill himself.And this guy really went through a lot, losing his beloved dogs, home, all possessions including all photos of his dead parents and little sister who died at 14 of Hodgkins when he was 15--qutting drinking, trying really hard to do as we all said to get his life back on track. He's on antidepressants finally so he's friendly now instead of surly-he's just a basically decent orphan with no relatives who wants to be loved.Why do we hate him? My sister says my father has been ranting for months about low-income housing going up a quarter of a mile from him. How they don't need lazy blacks in their Publix...I said "Debbie, that's why he lives there--there is never a black or Hispanic in that Publix a half mile from his golf course home--there are no blacks in his entire city. County, even. What makes him think they'd suddenly appear ?" "I don't know because there aren't any jobs here." It's a retirement community made in the until-recently uninhabited sawgrass flats of the Gulf of Mexico.There's a Taco Bell, a Publix, a bank and that's about all. "Or black-run businesses--they'd be afraid to be the pioneer blacks in a last white bastion like that." "The low-income people who would live there would be people like me , on social security for a terminal disease.I keep telling Dad that and that if one of them , him or mom, has a stroke the other's going to go broke paying for their nursing home care and need the low-income housing, too. He's just so spiteful and hateful of the poor." Well, anyway. Thank God for the female sex. One friend is going to Sam's Thursday and wants to buy us canned food in bulk. Another brought some food ( a hot whole chicken, baked beans, milk, orange juice, the ubiquitous canned tomato paste all the poor get tons of, 4 cans of tuna, 2 loaves of bread, butter) and gave us $26 worth of gas (15 gallons---the poor can't afford tuneups and ruin their engines by getting only a dollar or two of gas each time); another lent me $10 and another sent $20 Saturday with no strings attached , just a note" Be surprised! You'll never know when it will come so don't expect it yet expect it. " It was the 3rd time she sent money this summer, (Don't worry, Medicaid--it was $20 a month, my allotted extra income ceiling.)Now one just called to say she's bought and mailing each kid a $30 Walmart gift certificate for school clothes. Thank God for women! While the men bluster about their anti-missile detectors on their private jets---and help naught. Here's the scoop(and it will interest you ) on the poor in the next city over, and showing you the intelligence of their advocates, thank God:I want whoever you are, you, to care about allt his, the poor, the way we need real change fast: Mid-Pinellas Homeless Outreach denounces the "No Protest" zones agenda in St. Pete, Fl 7/23/04 Press Release: Mid-Pinellas Homeless Outreach St. Petersburg, FL - Contact Jay Shaft, Dir. 727-521-1577 We denounce the city of St. Petersburg and the City Council for daring to try to limit a public area that is being used for free speech. The sidewalk is public property to be used by everyone. Our constitutional liberty and freedom is not something that can repealed by a local municipality simply at the whim of a majority City Council vote. The people elect you and your job is to defend and protect our constitutional rights on a local level. We do not elect our officials to limit or deny us our First Amendment rights. This is not about some citizens protesting the war, or of the community protesting the harassment of citizens and their illegal arrest. It seems that those protests angered some people and there were numerous complaints about the protests continuing. There were also many people who were offended or angered by protests against abuse of the homeless and police harassment and brutality against them. The right to protest and demonstrate for these or any other issues is protected without question in our much-lauded constitution. The fact that those types of protests are allowed to occur is our greatest freedom. Our constitution has guaranteed us this right and the city has no business trying to take it away. In the work we do for the homeless and poor of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, it is necessary at times to engage in public protest activity. Often times this is the only real way to make the general public aware of issues affecting our often over looked homeless population. On numerous occasions we have joined Steve Kersker in picking up trash around Bay Walk. We have also demonstrated at Bay Walk with the intention to raise awareness of how alarming the homeless crisis has become. MPHO has also been involved with anti-war protesting at Bay Walk as part of our mission to promote peace and human rights. We have seen the effect that shifting untold BILLIONS of dollars away from social funding has done. Since January of this year we have seen a 30% increase in the number of families and single women with children seeking shelter. We are not able to meet over 300 requests from families for shelter EVERY MONTH! Our right to publicly expose this on any sidewalk or corner must be protected. We believe it is our duty as human rights activists to oppose the war/occupation in Iraq-Afghanistan. We are there on the sidewalk to expose the drastic cutting of critically needed social programs and veteran's services that has occurred to fund the wars. The money that has been cut has caused a direct increase in homelessness, poverty, and hunger. Every week we try to show people how this current war has depleted our most basic needs and necessities. We are able to make people aware of the alarming rise in homeless children by our presence at protests and demonstrations. Without our being able to demonstrate at Bay Walk, these people still might not be aware of this crisis. We have been approached by hundreds of people had not been aware of it until they heard us say it right there on the sidewalk. We try to make what many see as a simple anti-war protest into a diverse forum for discussing all the current problems in America. War is just a visible symptom of a deeply rooted economic crisis. Our goal is to educate the public in as visible a forum as possible. Since March of last year when the war started, homelessness has increased at least 30-40% on a national average. Since record setting budget cutbacks and shortfalls have increased, the rate of homelessness and poverty has skyrocketed. St. Petersburg has seen a 57% increase in homelessness since the beginning of 2003. Locally 62% of all new cases of homelessness in 2003 were single women and children. We are appalled that the city of St. Petersburg is trying to make a "No Protest Zone" in one of the busiest and easily accessible areas of the city. If we are denied the right to protest at Bay Walk, then they will deny any group with a legitimate cause a forum for protest. If they decide to make some areas no protest zones, then a precedent is set to limit free speech in all public areas. Any group that wanted to assemble to protest an injustice would lose their constitutional right to assemble and air a public grievance. This is wrong and must be stopped. "WE THE PEOPLE" means having the right to represent ourselves in any public forum, regardless of who it offends. The safety of pedestrians is NOT an issue here. I have been at protests where the presence of protestors on the edge of the sidewalk made it safer. This safety issue is only a ploy to prevent legitimate free speech and our right to publicly address grievances with our government and leadership. During the protests, people are funneled into the crosswalk by the protesters blocking them from crossing in other areas. A line of people on the edge of the sidewalk actually prevents people from crossing the street in an unsafe manner. If you go to Bay Walk, it is interesting to observe how many people cross the street in an unsafe manner before and after the protests. On any busy night you can see people jaywalking and not using the marked crosswalks. The protests do not in any way make this happen, as they only occur one or two nights a week, for an hour or two. To blame the protestors for an activity that occurs regardless of their presence is silly and illogical. We call on every citizen to stand up and fight this egregious assault on our free speech. Under the city guidelines any demonstration would be prevented. No matter what the issue an American right would be denied to us. Do you want to be the one to tell another citizen that you have decided where he is allowed to exercise his right to free speech? It is up to us as citizens to defend this right. Don't let democracy and freedom die in St. Pete. We fought too hard to get and maintain it. The fact that we even have to discuss this means we are still fighting for our freedom of speech today. Our Freedom means we must maintain eternal vigilance. Every person who values it must guard it. Jay Shaft, Director, Mid-Pinellas Homeless Outreach St. Petersburg, FL 727-521-1577 freethoughtinmedia2@yahoo.com <mailto:Freethoughtinmedia2@yahoo.co m> William McLean President, Mid-Pinellas Homeless Outreach mpoutreach@yahoo.com <mailto:mpoutreach@yahoo.com> FOR MORE INFO St. Pete For Peace has all the details of the proposed ordnance and a list of the groups who have publicly spoken out against the council agenda. <http://stpeteforpeace.org/> EDITORIAL RUN IN THE 7/23 ST. PETE TIMES Censorship and the city St. Pete Times Editorial Published July 23, 2004 <http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/23/O pinion/Censorship_and_the_ci.shtml> |
I don't think I'll be here anymore. I have no more room.The site stands as is , this year, No updates. Someday...--July 26, 2004 |
